


House of My Heart

by infernalandmortal



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-13 14:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10516032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernalandmortal/pseuds/infernalandmortal
Summary: After everything is over, they go back to the house. Murphy swears to make a home for her. Emori just wants to stay forever.(LikeThe Bunker Diaries, but in a house and post-S4 and probably everything after too.)





	1. Bluebird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maelidify](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/gifts).



> This work is dedicated to the incomparable maelidify, who has inspired me with their Quality Memori Content and who gave me the idea for this collection in the first place. They also inspired me to associate Murphy with Bukowski so thank them for that too haha.
> 
> This is set some indeterminable amount of time in the future. I just really want our kiddos to be okay. And make out. A lot.

When everything is over, they go back to the house.

They cross the invisible line without fanfare and then they’re there, standing at the front door, very carefully not looking at each other.

“Are you sure?” Murphy asks Emori. Her eyes are dark with thought. He knows what she’s remembering and hates that it is so. “We don’t have to stay here.”

She smiles. Though it doesn’t fool him, he relishes the sight nonetheless. He’s allowed to treasure her, he reasons, especially since they’re on the grounds of the place he almost lost her.

“I’m fine, John.”

He reaches for her, wrapping his arms around her shoulder while her arms twine around his waist.  “I’m going to make you a home here,” he promises, nuzzling into her neck, feeling her laugh softly into his shoulder. “No one is going to hurt you again.”

“Big talk from the boy who doesn’t know how to use knives,” she teases, fondness in her eyes. He knows she understands the sentiment, is grateful for not allowing himself to picture her in danger, her on the table, her suffering.

"I know how to use a gun though. Same thing." He pats his backpack, where a handgun and three magazines hide. He took them from Arkadia and didn't think twice. It was the least they could do.

"I'm going to make a home for you," he murmurs, the words and their softness so strange to him. "I swear."

"I believe you." Her voice is soft. Her eyes are trusting. He pecks her on the cheek, the nose, and pushes the door open with his foot when she brings him in for a bruising kiss.

He could stand there for hours with her just feeling her lips on his, reveling in the unfamiliar warmth of being wanted but eventually thunder rumbles overhead and they seek shelter in the abandoned mansion that will someday become their home.

She wanders off to the bookshelves in the living room while Murphy clatters around in the kitchen, taking stock of what they have and cataloging what they need and where to get it. There’s easily enough supplies in the basement to last five years, but they will run out of some things you can’t get anywhere but in the woods. Namely, meat.

 _We’ll get to that later,_ he thinks. It’s not as if he and Emori eat much anyway.

Emori is trying to keep herself occupied. In her eyes, he sees the memories rising. On her shoulders, he sees the weight of betrayal. She distracts herself by moving. He knows this, so he lets her.

He doesn’t turn on the music, just listens to Emori’s soft footsteps and the turning of pages. She walks back and forth while she reads, apparently unable to sit still. Occasionally she stops, stares at the page with an endearing squint, then resumes her pacing.

“I didn’t know you could read,” he says at some point after either hours or minutes have passed. She shrugs, eyes not moving from the page. There’s an adorable furrow between her brow.

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out,” she reads aloud. Murphy stops and listens. Her voice is low and lovely in the silence. “But I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep.”

She looks up, blinking at him, wondering if she should go on.

“I say, I know that you're there,” Murphy continues, stepping as if to read over her shoulder though he knows the poem by heart. “So don't be sad.”

“Then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there. I haven't quite let him die.” Emori’s grinning now. He puts his arms around her waist, his chin on her shoulder. He wants to kiss her. Wants this place to be something else that doesn’t feel like torture and begging for her life.

It will someday. But not now.

“And we sleep together like that,” he finishes, fumbling over the words slightly when Emori ducks under his arms to face him. “With our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep.”

“But I don't weep,” Emori raises an eyebrow, mischief in her smile. “Do you?”

He kisses her again, slow and purposeful, wanting to taste his favorite words on her tongue. She lets out a soft noise and sinks into him, grazing her teeth over his lower lip when he pulls her tighter to his chest.

“What do you suppose the bluebird is?” Emori asks, breathless, and Murphy is glad that metaphors don’t escape her.

“Love?” He guesses, kissing her nose again. She giggles, then blushes at the sound. He’s never heard her giggle. He likes it. “Homicidal tendencies? Who cares?”

She kisses him again and he swallows her _I love you_.


	2. Beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He points to the mirror behind her. Frowning, Emori turns, smile still on her lips.
> 
> “That,” John says definitively, “is the most beautiful thing of all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sappy and probably a little crappy but it's been a rough week and I miss our kids and I needed them to kiss a little bit.  
> (Also writing about Emori's insecurity is low-key catharsis but we're just not gonna look at that haha)

It’s almost dawn and Emori still hasn’t slept.

After tossing and turning for hours, she gives up on finding rest. She slips from the covers, careful not to wake John, who snores softly under a mound of blankets. She creeps into the bathroom, pushing the door shut and wincing as it creaks at the hinges. Leaning over the counter, she flicks the light on and squints at her reflection. The shadows under her eyes are startling in the bright light; the wrinkles at their corners are etched deep into her dark skin.

She sleeps in a short-sleeved shirt now, her arms and hands uncovered. She’s trying it, trying to learn how to exist in the skin she hates. It was easier in the Dead Zone when you had to cover your skin or wear a painful burn for weeks. Here, now, it’s harder to find excuses.

Her eyes trail over the mirror, following the line of her arms. Her gaze lingers on her left hand, every bump and edge of the malformed thing that defines her.

“Hey,” John’s voice is low from sleep. He pokes his head in, narrowing his eyes in the light, and flips the switch off. The low light from the bedroom is enough to illuminate his face. “Come back to bed.”

He wraps his arms around her waist, pressing his chest to her back and brushing a soft kiss over the juncture between her neck and shoulder. She leans her head away, exposing more skin to his lips.

"Admiring the view?" He asks softly, teasingly.

Emori raises an eyebrow, watching it move in the reflection. "Kind of the opposite, John."

He takes her right hand, her good hand, and tangles his fingers in hers, bringing it up to press a kiss to the back of her hand. “Beautiful,” he whispers.

She shakes her head, eyes flitting to the mirror. Compared to the girls he knows, girls with soft bodies like Clarke and story eyes like Raven, she is nothing of comparison.

“Yes,” John disagrees adamantly, kissing her cheek, resting his chin on her shoulder while regarding her in the mirror. “Beautiful.”

They lock eyes in the reflection and then John is spinning her around to face him. Her back presses against the counter but she doesn’t mind the cold marble so much when John pulls her in for a kiss.  He kisses her tattoo, then her collarbone then brings both her hands to his lips this time. “Beautiful,” he repeats.

Emori looks over her shoulder at the mirror. Her hair is a bird’s nest at the nape of her neck. She can see her second tattoo, the one by her ribs, through the fabric of her shirt.

“Look at you.” John’s voice was pure awe. Emori tries not to flush, turns back toward him to meet his eyes. The sincerity in them makes her uneasy. “How can you not see it?”

“I’m not-” Her voice cracks under the weight of her insecurities and his worship. She tries again. “To you I am. But you don’t know any better.”

It has the same bite and sting as his words when she told him she came back for him and he negated her with a harsh  _ not for me, you didn’t. I just so happened to be there.  _ It’s the same thing, she thinks, or at least a near enough thing to count against them both. They are both lonely, both afraid to be anything less or anything more.

John scoffs lightly. “I don’t want to know any better. I mean…” He trails off. She can feel the heat of his eyes as he looks her over. “Look at you,” he says again. “Your smile and your eyes and your laugh...” He steps closer, caging her in with his arms. “You’re all I want. You’re all I will ever want.”

She pulls him down for a kiss, losing herself to the press and slide of lips and tongue. Somehow he lifts her onto the counter, fitting himself between her legs, his hands gripping her thighs, leaving bruises. 

His kisses are always deep, needy, asking for reassurance that she’s here, that she will not leave, and even now his hands on her are tight, searching, desperate to feel her, to have her close. She doesn't mind, especially not when he leaves a mark. It sends flashes of heat through her stomach when she sees them later. 

“I love you,” she gasps out quietly when he kisses her neck, nuzzling and biting softly.

He pulls back, studies her. His hair is mussed from both sleep and her fingers. His lips, red and swollen, part in a soft breath.

“I love you too.” He kisses her nose. S he smiles, heart overflowing with something slow and warm and soft.

He points to the mirror behind her. Frowning, Emori turns, smile still on her lips. 

“That,” John says definitively, “is the most beautiful thing of all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Don't forget: if there's a scenario for this fic that you'd like to see, you need only ask!


	3. Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emori loves the house. She also hates it.

Murphy blames himself. He should have seen the nightmares coming.

She’s been oddly quiet since they first arrived, wandering around the house and lab with distant eyes, thoughtless eyes. He watches her with reservation but takes her silence as nothing more than careful consideration of this house, their life.

It makes him paranoid but for all the wrong reasons.

The first night they spend in the house is long and quiet. The creaks and groans of a settling structure are unfamiliar to them both and Emori spends the better half of the early hours tossing and turning, unable to find comfort in the soft mattress and warm blankets. Murphy tries to calm her, pulling her to his chest and carding his fingers through her hair, but it doesn’t work and she falls into a deep sleep just as the sun rises.

She wakes with the sun thirty minutes later, her eyes swollen and lips chapped. She barely speaks all day.

The next night she falls asleep early. He stays up, curled into a chair downstairs, slowly working his way through a novel. He means to come upstairs but  _ just one more page  _ follows him the way it hasn’t since he was young. He misses the feeling.

His eyes are drooping over page 95 when he hears her scream.

“John!”

It sounds the same as it did when she was in the kitchen with not-Bayliss standing over her brandishing a knife and throwing blows, but it also sounds worse somehow; it’s more guttural and terrified, panic leeching into the single syllable. “John!”

He nearly trips over the stairs as he bolts for their bedroom - it’s a miracle that he doesn’t concuss himself on the bannister - and rockets into the room just in time to see her shoot straight up in bed.

Tears are streaming down her clammy cheeks and her right hand is fisted into the blankets and her body is convulsing, curling inward as if she’s being punched and punched and punched and she's reaching for him with her badass hand and she is always the picture of beauty but right now she is the picture of brokenness.

Murphy allows his heart a split second to hurt and then he runs to her, takes her into his arms and holds her, shushing her and trying to convince her that whatever she saw was wrong, that she was safe.

He lets her wear herself out, rocking her back and forth slightly like he used to do with his mother when she took out her drunkenness on tears, not fists. But it’s different, it’s better, because it’s Emori. Emori who loves him. Emori who wants him.

He wraps her in his arms and a couple blankets for good measure, and whispers in her ear. He tells her that he loves her, that’s she's safe, that he won’t let anyone hurt her, and he means every syllable. 

When she’s calm and quiet, he looks at her. Her eyes are distant again, as if her mind is wandering away and he can’t quite reach her from where he stands anchored in reality. “Mori?” He calls softly, shaking her slightly. “You okay?”

She blinks her way into the room, an embarrassed hand coming to chase away the tears drying on her cheek. He follows her unsteady fingers with his sure ones, catching the salt on her skin and kissing it away.

“I like it here,” she starts softly, voice raw from misuse. “I promise. I just…” He waits. Her stories are good when she tells them like this. “I hear them.” He knows who “they” are. She doesn't have to say anything else. “I see them too and in my dream they take you first. They always take you and you die and I’m alone and so are you, in the end.” Her voice drops and Murphy strains to catch every word. “I don’t want you to die alone.”

He sighs. Hate rises in his stomach, sudden and sure and painful. Hate toward Clarke and Abby and everyone else who ever laid a hand on the love of his life. But as he looks down, there is also love for the woman in his arms who is looking up at him with glassy eyes.

Lost for words, he guides her so they are both curled under the blankets, her head pillowed on his chest. “You’re okay,” he soothes again as she sniffs once and lets out a shaky sigh.

“I’m tired,” she says, voice breaking. “Not the tired sleep can fix. Just…” She sighs again. “Tired.”

“We’re both tired.” He tips her chin up and kisses her gently. “Sleep, Mori. It’ll be better in the morning.”

A small smile twitches at the corner of her lips. “It is morning, John.”

“Whatever.” He grins at the small laugh she give in return. “Go to sleep, Emori.”

Her voice is halting and small. “Don’t leave me.”

Murphy holds her even tighter. “Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like giving other people gifts on my birthday so here you go. Don't worry, the next mini-chapter is happier.


	4. As She is in Daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essentially a short follow-up to the previous chapter.

He wakes early and she is gone.

He doesn’t panic, not yet, but the disruption in her late-sleeping pattern is out of the ordinary and that usually means something is about to happen. So he pads down the stairs, past the kitchen’s cold floor, and stops before the floor-to-ceiling windows. She sits on the other side, legs crossed, face stretched toward the dawning sun.

He’s not sure she should be outside but he lets her have this moment before the air burns to the touch.

As he watches, sunlight breaks through the trees, glorious in white and red and pink. It lights up the planes of her face, her deep, dark skin, the white of her teeth, the amber glow of her eyes. She does not see him but he sees her and he never wants to stop looking.

She smiles into the light, closing her eyes and turning her face to the sun, breathing deep of the woods and sky. Her shoulders, arms and legs are bare; he imagines running his hands over them, feeling the heat of the morning under his hands. But he watches the rise and fall of her chest for a long moment before cracking open the door, stepping out with bare feet into the equal shine of her smile.

“Morning,” her voice is rough from sleep. “Sleep well?”

He sits next to her, extending his bare legs next to hers, feeling her skin on his, marveling at the difference in their tones. He hums a note in answer to her question and leans against the glass. “The earth could be toxic,” he says casually.

“We’re not dead yet,” she says, leaning her head on his shoulder. “And I want to enjoy the sun while I still can.”

He hums again, kissing the top of her head, and lets the sun wash over them in the sleepy morning haze.

**Author's Note:**

> Poem: _Bluebird_ , Charles Bukowski. Punctuation edited by me.
> 
> If you have any requests for scenes/scenarios that you would like to see in this fic, let me know! You can also send me requests on [ Tumblr ](http://infernalandmortal.tumblr.com)


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